Sham rationalism

According to Paul Tobin:

“One evidence that the pastoral epistles were not written by Paul is the fact that the authentic epistles of Paul contained an imminent expectation of the apocalyptic return of Jesus (the parousia) while the pastorals give the impression of settled communities who see their churches existing into the foreseeable future.”

Tobin’s distinction between the “authentic” Pauline epistles and the deutero-Pauline epistles runs counter to the view of his co-contributor, Robert Price, who rejects the authenticity of the canonical Pauline epistles in toto. So this is yet another instance in which one contributor to TCD debunks another contributor to TCD.

“Hays defense is incomprehensible. For his attempted rationalization of I Corinthians 7:29-31, the most I can make of his claim is that when Paul says the time is “short” he means ‘shortened” and that this is somehow in opposition to the Greek concept of the eternity of the world. But this does not take away the clear sense of the passage. How could time being ‘shortened’ from infinite to finite have any bearing on Paul’s point?”

I already explained that in my original reply to Tobin, on which he is supposedly commenting. To repeat what I said before, since it didn’t sink in the first time around:

Tobin is evidently ignorant of what Paul was setting his own position in opposition to. He was opposing the view of popular Greek philosophy. On the one hand, this stressed the continuity of the world, given the eternity of the world. On the other hand, it also stressed a degree of personal discontinuity, given the immorality of the soul-–rather than the resurrection of the body. Hence the temptation to squeeze everything into this life on the assumption that because the afterlife is incorporeal, there are things you can do here-below which will be denied you in the hereafter. By contrast, Christian eschatology reversed the equation. On the one hand, this stressed the discontinuity of the world, given the day of judgment, and the palingenesis. On the other hand, this also stressed a degree of personal continuity, not only given the intermediate state, but the final state (i.e. resurrection of the body).





But since Tobin continues to harp on this passage, let’s elaborate. As Brian Rosner and Roy Ciampa observe in their recent commentary:
Bruce Winter has suggested that “the present crisis” being experienced in Corinth was “dislocation in the city’s life caused through a series of acute grain shortages and the attendant social unrest.” He cites evidence for grain shortages in the East during the forties and fifties in Eusebius, Pliny, Suetonius, and several strands of nonliterary evidence. Tiberius Claudius Dinippus was curator of the grain supply in Corinth during this period, an office filled only in times of famine…It is quite possible that Paul had a grain shortage or famine in Corinth in mind when he counseled Corinthian engaged couples to remain as you are “because of the present crisis, or it may be that a few years after such severe famine other types of social upheaval and economic stress may have resulted as part of its aftereffects. R. Ciampa & B. Rosner, The First Letter to the Corinthians (Eerdmans 2010), 335-36.

Paul uses it [“crisis”] elsewhere with no thought of the End Time…the word “crisis” is usually employed for temporary periods of crisis or distress. ibid. 336-37.

Furthermore, Paul’s use of the other key word does not support the sense of “impending.” He uses it to refer to that which is already present in contrast to the future…Paul was not expecting the world to come to an immediate end, it seems, or he would not have been warning people about the implications of singleness and marriage for life with more or less stress. ibid. 336-37.

Verses 29-21 inject another factor into Paul’s discussion of whether to get married or not…the opening words of v29 mark a transition to a new point…It is not that the two paragraphs are unrelated. But the first must not be collapsed into the second. The new idea is that since believers know where the world is headed, they are not to allow it to dictate their existence…The prospect of a new heaven and new earth takes the edge off prevailing troubles on this earth. ibid. 342-43.

The context implies that Paul expects the Corinthians to live long enough, for example, that it would make a significant difference whether or not they marry in the near future. Additionally, as Oster notes…Paul continued to talk to the Corinthians about his own future plans to visit them (4:19; 11:34; 16:5-8) and the need for them to make and execute plans for a donation to aid in relief work among the churches of Judea (1 Cor 16:1-4; cf. 2 Cor 8-9). ibid. 345.

Here in v31b it is not the world itself that is said to be “passing away,” but rather “the world in its present form.” ibid. 348.

Barry Danylak also presents detailed archeological evidence to show that Paul’s remark about the “present crisis” has reference, not to the imminent return of Christ, but famine and the resultant social unrest. Cf. B. Danylak, "Tiberius Claudius Dinippus and the Food Shortages in Corinth," TynB 59/2 (2008), 231-70.

Continuing with Tobin:

“Hays attempt to explain away the imminent eschatological expectation in I Thessalonian 4:14-17 is also equally unsuccessful. He quoted evangelical Gordon Fee…”

Actually, I quoted two scholars: Gordon Fee and Robert Stein. Can’t Tobin read?

For ease of reference, I’ll reproduce the original quotes:

“[Fee] Two further matters need discussion, since a good deal of misunderstanding has had its day here. First, Paul is not stating that he expects to be alive at the Parousia. Rather, he was simply currently among ‘the living’ who are set out in contrast to ‘the sleeping.’ His concerning fact has nothing to do with who will be living, but with the simple fact that they have no advantage over the dead regarding the Parousia. Or to put it another way: to be alive or dead is of no consequence at all regarding the coming of Christ. In other places, including later in this letter (5:10), Paul reckons with either possibility. Similarly, a few years later he can reflect on ‘whether we are ‘at home’ [in the body] or “away from home”’ (2 Cor 5:6-9) with regard to being alive or dead at the coming of Christ. In any case, Paul’s (and ‘their’ or ‘our’) being among the living or the dead at the coming of Christ is ultimately an irrelevancy; that, after all, is quite the point made in the passage as a whole.”

“[Stein] It should be noted that what Paul is primarily emphasizing in 1 Thes 4:13-18 is not that he and the recipients of this letter will be alive when Jesus returns. Rather, he is affirming that the dead in Christ will not miss out on the parousia. Accordingly, Paul does not bother to clarify who among those presently living will be alive at the parousia and who will not. Since the contrast lies between those Thessalonians who are dead in Christ and those who are alive, where else can Paul include himself and the recipients of this letter except with those who are alive?”

Continuing with Tobin:

“By saying this is not the emphasis of this passage, Fee has sidestepped an important issue. The context of the I Thessalonians 4 is that some believers in Thessalonica had passed away before the parousia, when they had all expected to be alive when Jesus returns. Paul was writing in response to this. As Gerd Lüdemann pointed out, why would the believers had held such a belief unless they had been taught by Paul of an imminent parousia within their lifetimes?[3]”

Well that’s pretty silly:

i) To begin with, it’s quite possible for Paul’s congregants and correspondents to misconstrue what he told them. Indeed, Paul often has to correct their misunderstandings.

ii) In particular, Paul had to leave the nascent Thessalonian congregation before he was able to thoroughly ground them in the rudiments of the Christian faith (cf. 1 Thes 2:17). So they were inadequately catechized–which made them more vulnerable to theological confusion.

iii) Moreover, Paul was not their only source of information. False teachers were also abroad. Indeed, that occasions his second letter to the Thessalonian church.

iv) Finally, in 1 Thes 5, Paul accentuates the suddenness and unpredictability of the parousia. But if he expected the parousia to arrive in the very first Christian generation, then there’d be nothing especially sudden or unpredictable about that event.

“When Hays tries to claim that this ‘impending crisis’ refers merely to some famine, he is either willfully ignoring, or is ignorant of, the significance of the words Paul is using here. The two words translated as ‘crisis’ (anagken) and ‘distress’ (thlipsin) by the NRSV are pregnant with eschatological meaning. As Dale Allison pointed out, the first word, anagken, is used elsewhere in the NT and Septuagint in an eschatological sense (Zephaniah 1:15; Luke 21:23). The second word, thlipsin, which can also be translated as ‘tribulation,’ is used very often in an eschatological sense (Daniel 12:1, Habakkuk 3:16, Zephaniah 1:15, Acts 14:22, Colossians 1:24, Revelation 7:14).[1]”

And Tobin is ignorant of basic lexical semantics. From the fact that these terms sometimes occur in eschatological settings, it hardly follows that they themselves have an eschatological import. That particular meaning is supplied by the particular context, and not by the word itself.

“That ‘we will not all die’ [1 Cor 15:51-52] means that Paul believed that at least some of the original recipients of his letter would still be alive at the sounding of the eschatological trumpet. Taken together with the passage other two passages we have seen, it is quite obvious that Paul was expecting the present world order as he knew it to end either within his lifetime or those of his congregations.”

That’s an ironic claim since, in this same post, Tobin later quotes Barrett to support his interpretation of 1 Cor 7. Yet on 1 Cor 15:51, Barrett says, “Sleep is Paul’s synonym for death (cf. 15:6), and he means that not all Christians (this is the point of the first person plural) will die, since some will still be alive at the coming of Christ” (380).

Therefore, Barrett doesn’t draw the same inference from the first person plural that Tobin does. According to Barrett, the “we” denotes whatever Christians happen to be alive at the time of the Parousia, not Paul and the Corinthians.

“Another evidence normally cited by scholars for the spurious authorship of the pastorals is the fact that the pastorals showed a more developed hierarchical structure than those evident from the authentic epistles of Paul…Firstly, he made an unsupported assertion that “the polity in 1 Cor 12 seems to have a more developed ‘hierarchy’ than the simpler polity in the Pastorals.” He did not show how he derived such a conclusion.”

That’s because I don’t assume that all my readers are quite as dense as Tobin. It’s really pretty obvious. 1 Cor 12 has a more extensive “hierarchy” of Christian ministries than we find in the Pastorals. Titus only speaks of elders, while 1 Tim only speaks of elders/deacons. Compare that to 1 Cor 12:28, with its numerical ranking of many different ministries.

As I said before, bureaucracies ordinarily become more elaborate over time, with more layers and positions–not fewer. So, if we were using hierarchical structure as a criterion for dating, the multifaceted polity in 1 Corinthians would naturally suggest a later date than the strealined polity in 1 Timothy and Titus.

But, of course, Tobin can’t see the text on its own terms. He can only see what his favorite liberal scholars tell him to see.

“Secondly, in contradiction to his first argument (which seems to show that he thinks the Corinthian church was more developed than the ones referred to in the pastoral epistles), Hays speculated that Paul had to put ‘more emphasis on church office, to take over as the apostles died off.’”

Like so many other clueless disputants, Tobin is blindsided by a tu quoque argument. I didn’t argue that I personally think 1 Corinthians was penned sometime after the Pastoral epistles. I simply answered Tobin on his own grounds. Tobin can’t follow the argument even though my argument is following his argument. It’s difficult to have an intelligent debate with someone who’s that uncomprehending.

“Let me first note that Hays have conveniently ignored the fact that the developed church hierarchy is an important clue to the spurious nature of the pastoral epistles is something accepted by most critical scholars. [5]”

The fact that most critical scholars believe something doesn’t make their belief a fact. There’s an elementary difference between the fact that someone believes something, and the factuality of what he believes. The fact that most critical scholars think the Pastorals are spurious doesn’t make that classification a fact. That tells me something about most critical scholars, and nothing about the Pastoral epistles. For a self-styled free-thinker, Tobin is conspicuous for his lack of critical thinking skills.

“In response to his first argument, the evidence that the Corinthian church was certainly more chaotic that the ones referred to in the pastoral epistles is very clear.”

“Chaos” and “hierarchical structure” are quite compatible. Take the Federal gov’t. Over time the bureaucracy becomes increasingly ingrown and overgrown, but by the same token, increasingly inefficient. That’s how institutions tend to develop.

“During Paul’s time, we see that the church structure is quite amorphous with no one really in command. In I Corinthians we see that there are many different types of members in the church – apostles, prophets, teachers, miracles workers and others (I Corinthian 12:28).”

i) That overlooks the numerical ranking.

ii) Moreover, to say no one was in charge, even if that were true, is no indication of temporal priority. Just look at how state and federal gov’t respond to a major crisis, like an ecological disaster. Different agencies often trip over each other. Have turf wars. Duplication. Institutional inertia.

Yet that’s not because we’re dealing with an earlier phase in the history of an evolving bureaucracy. To the contrary, this generally reflects a more advanced stage of the process, where gov’t becomes increasingly subdivided, with ever more agencies and middle managers. Reams of red tape. That’s the perennial source of light-bulb jokes about gov’t.

“In the pastorals, this is no longer the case. We find that there are bishops, presbyters and deacons who are formally appointed to their position (I Timothy 3:1-7, 4:14, Titus 1:5-9) and who have the right to get paid (I Timothy 5:27) by the congregation.”

i) To say it’s “no longer” the case begs the question.

ii) We don’t have bishops and presbyters in the Pastorals, as if these terms designate two different positions or offices. Rather, these are interchangeable terms. Cf. I. H. Marshall, Pastoral Epistles (T&T Clark 1999), 170-81.

iii) We don’t have bishops/presbyters and deacons represented in all of the Pastoral Epistles. We only have one office in Titus. Is that a “hierarchy?” Does a single office constitute a “hierarchy”? A hierarchy of one?

iv) Men were “formally appointed” to church office in the early days of the NT church. Take the institution of the deaconate in Acts 6–complete with the imposition of hands. Likewise, Paul was already appointing elders during his first missionary journey (Acts 14:23).

As one scholar points out:

What is often dismissed rather quickly is the fact that the language (Rom 16:1; Phil 1:1) and the phenomenon of authoritative church leadership (e.g., Rom 12:8; 1 Cor 6:2-6; 12:28; Phil 4:3; 1 Thes 5:12) are present elsewhere in Paul. Furthermore, very little of the actual structure of the church in Ephesus is evident from 1 Timothy. In both 1 Timothy and Titus, instructions regarding leaders and their selection focus mainly on matters of character and behavior. P. Towner, The Letters of Timothy and Titus (Eerdmans 2006), 50.

The churches in Crete (probably house churches in a number of towns throughout the island; 1:5; see commentary) still, presumably, fairly young, but nevertheless having reached the stage where Titus must select elders/overseers from the house fellowships to lead them (cf. Acts 14:23). This surely seems to be the picture of an ecclesiastical situation (on one geographical area) characterized by decentralized leadership, with the qualification of that each local community might be presumed to be under the founding apostle’s authority. Given this picture, it is rather difficult to explain, as proponents of pseudonymity must, how the letter would have functioned years after Paul or Titus, when some sort of leadership would already have been in place and instructions that are so specific would have been completely irrelevant. The church setting depicted in the letter to Titus is completely at odds with theories of late authorship. ibid. 51.

As another scholar points out:

The organization, such as we can reconstruct it, does not resemble the hierarchical arrangement of clergy described in Ignatius’s Letters. It comes closer to the synagogal structure of diaspora Judaism, an organizational arrangement that, in turn, closely resembled that in Greco-Roman collegia. Such arrangements were available in Paul’s milieu. No longer period of internal development was required for them to emerge. There is a complete absence of legitimation of any organizational element in these letters. Leaders are not designated as priests, and none of their functions are cultic in character. Instead, they are given the sort of secular designations used in clubs, and their functions are practical and quotidian. L. T. Johnson, The First and Second Letters to Timothy (Doubleday 2001), 75.

I’d add that Johnson is a liberal Catholic scholar, so Tobin can’t dismiss him as a “Fundamentalist” or evangelical. Moreover, to the extent that his Catholicism is germane, we’d expect him to support “early Catholicism” in the Pastorals. But he does not.”

Continuing with Tobin:

“Hays second argument betrays an evangelical’s ahistorical understanding of early Christianity. First, to say that Paul is making preparation for the ‘death of the apostles’ implies the idea of apostolic succession, something which only came about in the second century CE.”

Of course, that suffers from a fatal equivocation. “Apostolic succession” is a technical term with a specialized meaning. For instance: “1558 ‘Episcopal consecration confers, together with the office of sanctifying, also the offices of teaching and ruling. . . . In fact . . . by the imposition of hands and through the words of the consecration, the grace of the Holy Spirit is given, and a sacred character is impressed in such wise that bishops, in an eminent and visible manner, take the place of Christ himself, teacher, shepherd, and priest, and act as his representative (in Eius persona agant).’"

http://www.vatican.va/archive/catechism/p2s2c3a6.htm

Continuing with Tobin:

“Paul had no use of this idea of apostolic transmission of his gospels. He expressly disavowed that he received his gospel from any man (Galatians 1:1, 1:11-12).”

i) That’s just incompetent. It confounds the source of origin with subsequent transmission–as if these were equivalent principles.

ii) Moreover, the fact that an Apostle received the Gospel by direct revelation hardly means that every Christian receives the Gospel by direct revelation. To the contrary, Paul himself transmits the Gospel to his audience by his letters, lectures, speeches, and sermons.

iii) Likewise, Paul didn’t object to apostolic tradition (1 Cor 15:1-8) when addressing his audience.

“Second, Paul could not merely ‘put more emphasis on church office’ if the structure is not there to begin with.”

As many scholars have documented, the concept of church office is a carryover from Judaism. So that was “there to begin with.” Cf. R. Beckwith, Elders in Every City (Paternoster 2002).

“It is no surprise that critical scholars are nearly unanimous in declaring the pastorals to be pseudepigraphical. The Catholic New Testament scholar Raymond Brown estimated that 80% to 90% of critical scholars consider these epistles to be spurious.[8]”

And the Catholic NT scholar Luke Timothy Johnson considers these epistles to be authentic. Moreover, Johnson is not an “Fundamentalist” or evangelical or even a conservative.

“Turning to my summary of the position of critical scholarship on the spurious authorship of Daniel, the Pastoral Epistles, Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Thessalonians, I & II Peter, James and Jude, Hays accused of not even beginning engaging ‘the opposing literature.’ Again all his references of ‘the opposing literature’ are either from evangelical apologists or very conservative scholars. This doesn’t really amount to any criticism since my summary was based on mainstream biblical scholarship which is, of course, at variance with apologetic works!”

Notice how Tobin simply treats liberal scholar as the standard of reference–which begs the question. You can’t reasonably contend that liberal scholarship is true because liberal scholars say so.

Tobin has no idea of how to argue for his position. He isn’t actually making a case for “modern scholarship.” Rather, all he’s done is to stipulate that “modern scholarship” is true.

After all this time, Tobin still doesn’t get it. If you’re going to show that Christian faith in Scripture is delusional, then you actually have to show it. You have to justify your claims. If you’re going to deploy the argument from authority (e.g. “mainstream/critical” scholars), then you have to justify your sources. To disprove the Bible by taking liberal scholarship for granted is no disproof at all. That’s a non-starter. It goes nowhere.

At most what we’re getting from Tobin is not an argument, but an autobiographical confession about his childish faith in liberal scholars. This is what his “argument” boils down to: the Bible is unbelievable because unbelievers say the Bible is unbelievable!

Doubtless it comes as no surprise that like-minded thinkers think alike. Tobin’s appeal to a self-selected liberal consensus is tautologous. The poor kid doesn’t know how to get a real argument off the ground–much less keep it afloat.